Rehoboth Beach - Tales from America

October 5, 2008

We checked out Rehoboth beach today. The usual seaside ware was on disply but it did seem a bit brighter than I was used to. The shops along the beachfront are all very quaint and painted in bright beach colours. The boardwalk on the beach was really impressive. A wide expansive area with a grassy edge. Athena took loads of pics of me in various crazy poses. I think the highlight of today was meeting "Miss Delaware State". She was working in one of the clothes boutiques next to the beach and still had her sash on from winning the competition. What a contrast between the pair of us - she being tanned, petite and dainty looking - me a big, pasty, guffawing english girl!

We ate some corndogs and got some passport photos done at a photobooth. Although when they were developed they turned out to be in black and white and as we'd pulled ridiculous faces the photos now looked oddly staged. On our trip back to DC that evening, we stopped for crabcakes at some chain restaurant. I don't remember the name. The Redskins were playing against the Philly Eagles and surprisingly the Redskins won! Athena said this was highly unusual so I like to think that me buying a Redskins belt down at the beach gave them some luck and had a little to do with their victory.

Arriving in DC - Tales from America

October 3rd, 2008

Arrived in Washington DC Dulles Airport. The queue at immigration was really long. Pretty scary stuff, had to wait in line and tell a very serious looking chap who I was staying with and why! So many questions and I forgot where I was staying and my palms started sweating...shit I was scared but had done nothing wrong! Just the eternal guilt kicking in again I suppose. Customs was much more pleasant, I got my bag and spotted Athena straight away. She'd not really changed much in the eleven years since I'd last seen her in Salzburg..maybe a little rounder and recovering from a kidney infection but essentially she had the same laconic aura of weary worldliness and it was sooo great to see her again! We had to wait a little while for Natalies boyfriend to show up so we sat on the airport floor and caught up on the last decade or so of our lives.

When Paul Pembleton arrived (what an apt name!) he was very irritable, like a bear with a sore head, obviously not the travelling type! He works for JPMorgan in the UK and I think was pretty worried about his job prospects considering the current climate in world banking.

Rehoboth Beach - Tales from America

October 4th, 2008

Athena is working in her video store this morning. The job that she tells everyone in Washington DC is her main job just for kicks. I had some time so I went exploring down the Kemble Park Nature Trail. Decided then and there that I would run down it every morning that I was in DC, it was sooo beautiful. I met Athena back at the video store in the afternoon where I discovered her watching David Attenboroughs "The Life of Reptiles". We took the car on a mini-road trip later that day down to visit Mark and Ted who live near Rehoboth Beach. Mark and Ted are an affluent gay couple, they own a nice big house up on Capital Hill in DC and a second home down near Rehoboth Beach in Delaware State. The beach house was in a trailer park called "Camelot" what a flamboyant name for a trailer park! All the trailers were pretty swish, not here were your typical "white trash" but a bunch of predominantly rich gay couples without kids who had money to burn so used it to create their own little beach hideaway.

The trip down to Rehoboth was scenic, kind of cool. It was the first view I had had this holiday of strip-mall America. The garish signs shout at you from the side of the road. They are just so unbelievably big! Their steeple-like towers encourage more and more people to come worship at these tacky temples. Everytime we saw another strip mall by the roadside Athena would exclaim "Urggh, welcome to the real America!" No wonder she feels out of step with her own country.

When we reached Mark and Ted's place, they were consummate hosts, they're an absolutely adorable couple. We were fed barbeque shrimps, pasta salads and other barbequed meats. Mark is such a fantastic cook and we pleaded for his recipe for blueberry cake, I think it was the sour cream that made it so tasty. This little secret made it the best blueberry cake I'd ever had. Sweet with a bitter aftertaste..like good sex! Ha!

The pair of them are devoted to Kiba, their Japanese non-barking dog. The only way we could tell she was excited was to check out her tail which flopped from side to side when she was happy. Athena and I spent the evening drinking Proscetto, playing the piano and singing. I reckon we kept the boys suitably entertained. Athena seems to know all the words to an endless array of Broadway hits. I however kept up the side for Lloyd Webber!

Autumn in Central Park, New York - Tales from America

Shit, something has shifted deep within me. I am lying in a rickety bed in a hostel next to Central Park and I feel fidgety and high. Its so stupid, I keep telling myself its a trick of the mind and I'm just delusional but actually I think my mindset has changed. Before going downstairs for a coffee I have to cleanse my thoughts. I walk down by central Park stepping on all the subway grates as I walk down the street, trying to keep my nerve as I imagine each one collapsing in on itself and my legs being pulled down into the murky caverns below, closely followed by the rest of me.

The passing of trains is intermittant and signalled by a gathering roar crescendoing to thunder as these silver beasts of the underground carry their passengers ever deeper to the spiralling suburbs. New York is kind of weird, its all very logically set out in its grid network but at the same time one feels on the edge of some kind of crazy neuroticism. I'm not sure whether that is just within me or whether the city imbues this mindset on me. I think I have become an extension of the city. The background noise of taxis, cars, people talking into their mobiles, all of this has become part of me.

London can be like this too but we're not quite so outlandish or expressive. We don't express our anger like New Yorkers do. I think somehow New Yorkers are healthier in their attitude than us Londoners.

Its funny I feel like I'm getting a cold and I reckon its because I went running in DC on Monday morning and it was freezing! Oh my god there is a huge clattering going on outside my dorm, sounded like someone fell down the stairs..I think it was someone pulling a suitcase down. Anyway I think having a cold reminds you that you're alive, you suffer a little and therefore when you do go out somewhere or make it to work you feel a sense of achievement. I feel so free and content right now. I think I was getting boxed-in back in London.

England is such a small space - a tiny island filled to bursting with people. I often think it would be a good idea to force some of us Southerners to go up to Scotland and live in the Highlands. Its so beautiful up there. America is huge, everything here is expanded outwards and your sense of perspective widens as you explore the country, wide roads, wide cars, wide people...